Katie Musgrove, executive associate for Kenan Distinguished Professor Kuo-Hsiung Lee, Ph.D., and the Natural Products Research Laboratories, was given the Kay Wijnberg Hovious Outstanding Employee Forum Delegate Award on June 14 after being nominated by her fellow delegates.
The award recognizes the work of outstanding forum delegates who go above and beyond the call of duty when performing work on behalf of the forum. There are three winners each year, who are voted on by the other delegates.
Ricky Roach, energy utilities technician at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and forum delegate, nominated Musgrove for the award. Roach said he chose Musgrove because she goes above and beyond in fulfilling her duties as an Employee Forum delegate.
“She worked from the very first day she became a delegate to establish the community service committee because she saw a need in the community,” Roach said. “I know that with Katie, she’s not just going through the motions, this is something that’s near and dear to her heart. As community service committee chair, she works very hard to make the committee a success and she steers it in the direction that’s most effective.”
All forum employees are expected to join one of its committees and have eight allotted hours per month during which they work toward meeting that committee’s goals. Musgrove said that when she joined the forum, she was most interested in its service events but realized there was no community service committee. She approached the executive board about starting a new committee and has committed many personal hours to ensuring its success in the last year.
In the past year under Musgrove’s leadership, the committee has collected enough food to donate 2,761 meals, helped build a home for a UNC-Chapel Hill housekeeper with Habitat for Humanity and assisted the forum’s ongoing efforts supporting the Carolina Blood Drive and the Carolina Campus Community Garden.
In the next year, Musgrove said the committee plans to partner with UNC-Chapel Hill Human Resources to promote the use of the community service leave benefit for UNC-Chapel Hill staff and hopes to partner with Habitat for Humanity to sponsor a home for another UNC-Chapel Hill staff member.
“I am extremely honored to be a recipient of this award, especially as the recognition comes from my outstanding colleagues,” Musgrove said. “This award also means that much more given that I was honored along with two exceptional women to whom I’ve continuously looked up as a new member of the forum.”
Shayna Hill, department manager at the Department of Dental Ecology in the UNC School of Dentistry, and Kathy Ramsey, data manager of the Department of Dental Research, also received the award.